Concurrent success – and sanity – in athletics and academics is a careful balancing act, one with which Erika Bradley, a traditional BS nursing student at the UB School of Nursing (SON), is well acquainted.

This is not how your typical Buffalonian would experience winter – unless, of course, you’re one of those fortunate UB nursing students who took advantage of Clinical Assistant Professor Joann Sands’ winter intersession course, Community Engagement Across Populations. Now in its second year, this unique study abroad opportunity offers students a chance to immerse themselves in a culture outside of the United States, encouraging them to absorb new and exciting personal and professional perspectives on life and health. Returning to Belize for a second year, Sands’ group, which consisted of nine UB students and three Pace University students, visited two villages, More Tomorrow and Franks Eddy, for nine days in early January 2015.

Partnering with our area hospitals and health care providers, UB School of Nursing has opened several new Dedicated Education Units (DEU) to provide more clinical opportunities in this collaborative undergraduate learning environment. The new sites include a 26 bed telemetry unit at the Catholic Health Systems Sisters Hospital, St. Joseph Campus; a medical-surgical unit at Millard Fillmore Suburban Hospital; a medical-surgical/oncology/hospice unit at Sisters of Charity Hospital; and a perioperative surgical unit at Roswell Park Cancer Institute. With the addition of these four sites, the SON now offers undergraduate students experiences in a total of 15 DEUs comprised of 18 nursing units in both inpatient and hospice settings throughout WNY. On June 17, the SON held its third annual DEU collaborative partnership meeting. All DEU partners were represented and discussed ongoing opportunities to collaborate in sustaining the DEU, potential expansion of the DEU into additional specialty areas such as critical care and ED, and ways to strengthen the undergraduate nursing program to bridge the gap between academia and practice.

In 2014, a group of UB School of Nursing RN-BS students, Ann Duignan, RN; Naghma Mustafa, RN; Michelle Poole, RN; Leah Puckett, RN; and Jacqueline Somma, RN, PCCN, used their quality improvement project as an opportunity to attack an issue that is common and costly in terms of both lives and resources, for individuals and institutions – catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI), the most frequently reported health condition acquired at hospitals, according to the American Nurses Association (ANA).